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West Coast Region ~ Bay St. George District

Forrest's List 1858

Bay St. George

NOTES FROM THE PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES
David Davis, Provincial Archivist
A Document from St. George's Bay, 1858
This document appeared in the Appendix to the Journal of the House of Assembly for 1858.
It was written by Henry H. Forrest a merchant of St. George's to the Governor Sir
Alexander Bannerman in St. John's in reply to a dispatch from the Governor which was
in response to Forrest's appeal for relief for the distressed people of St. George's.
St. George's in the 1850's was still a no-man's land on the French treaty shore
Cape Ray to Point Riche), patrolled by warships of England and France. What little
civil administration it possessed it owed to the perseverance of the Newfoundland
Government in extending its control over the area. With the uncertainty of ownership
and/or administration of St. George's, many people living there wondered about
their future. Especially concerned were merchants such as Forrest who could lose their
property if France wanted English property cleared from the Treaty shore.
However, the main value of this document is the list of families living in St. George's
it contains. As with most lists of this kind it registers only the names of head of
households with the number of persons in that household. At the same time, it gives
a researcher information about people from the West Coast of Newfoundland for a period
when very little is available from other sources.
Despite all these problems, the document ends with an endorsement of the future of
life in St. George's and the determination to stay there in spite of the hardships.
The document which follows has been edited to conserve space and remove extraneous
material. Where the symbols (*****) occur across a page, this indicates that a paragraph
or paragraphs have been deleted.
H. H. Forrest, St. George's to Sir Alexander Bannerman,
October 28, 1858
* * * * * * * *
To your Excellency's enquiry for the names of the individuals or companies who would
discontinue their autumnal credits, I beg leave to name Messrs. Samuel McKay,
Joseph Legrandais, John Thomas, Franncis Halbot, John Messervey and Sons, Ernest L.
Romain, and Constant Garnier; besides many of the settlers, who, possessing the means
to engage and profitably to employ parties assured me that the dread of the loss
of the spring and summer fisheries, as threatened by French interference and
disallowance, reluctantly compelled them to suspend their autumnal credits.
I beg also to observe that the credit system here is dependent solely on the
strict honesty of the poor fisherman, and on the certainty of the next ensuring
autumn and winter. The French claim, therefore, of exclusive right to those
fisheries by their recent notice, along oblige the traders here to adopt the
alternative of no credit, as a matter of self protection, until the question
of a mutual right of fishery be settled by the Government of England and France
* * * * * * * * *
Your Excellency desires, thirdly, the names of the six hundred people to whom
allusion is made in my letter of 18th August last; a description of their
localities an the distance their residences are from the sea. I beg to refer
your Excellency to an appended list underneath, of about four hundred and
forty-four persons. Of forty families and upwards swelling the list, I am
assured, by a letter of this date from the Rev. A. Belanger, that "many are
already without any means of subsistence, and the others will very soon be
short of food." Their localities generally range along the borders of the Bay
of St. George and along the borders of the Harbor, while their residences
rarely are one hundred yards from the sea.
* * * * * * * * *
Your Excellency graciously desires my opinion as to the settlement of St.
George's Bay, and whether, I think it is a settlement of importance to British
fisherman, The settlement of St. George's Bay I humbly conceive is important,
from its rapidly encreasing population; - from the great accumulation of
personal property, and the greatly enhanced value of real estate within the
last thirty years-from its vast resources in herring, and more partial resources
in salmon; and from its proximity to the Gulph and Labrador cod-fishery. As a place
of refuge for distressed shipping homeward bound from the neighboring shores
of Canada and New Brunswick, it is of invaluable importance, as it has, within
my experience, afforded shelter, and I may add, given life, to many shipwrecked
seaman. The Bay of St. George, freed from French interference, and wholly
British, from its commanding position in the Gulph of St. Lawrence, with governmental
support to encourage it, would, in my humble estimation, spring into new life,
into wealth, and finally into acknowledged importance.
The people of Bay St. George are all warmly attached to the place. The Idea of
removal, it appears to me, is intolerable to them. Starvation alone,
consequent on the loss of their fisheries, would or could reconcile them to an
abandonment of their much cherished homes.
* * * * * * * *
H. H. FORREST
Bay St. George, Newfoundland
28th October, 1858

List of Destitute families referred to in Foregoing Document

N.B.-The following list has been as carefully made out and revised by my neighbors
as circumstances admitted of. Five families, amounting to thirty-two individuals, have
withdrawn from the settlement under fear of want for the winter; while several
families, assisted by their neighbors, will have the means of passing the winter.